[ltp] Z61p/Z61m experiences needed

[Brian D. Ropers-Huilman]

I have just started a new job and had to give up my trusty T43p. I
chose to go with a Z61p (9450-GAU).

Unfortunately, my experiences are not the best, though I'm hoping
there is some defect in the machine and not something about Linux
running on the machine. Basically, I experience random power loss --
the machine simply shuts itself off. In my job I am off to meetings
quite frequently and sometimes the system is off when I get back to my
office. However, I have been using the machine -- typing emails,
browsing the web, or at the command-line ssh'ing into another system,
and it's powered off as well.

I have tried to very carefully experiment with various hardware and
software components to see if I could isolate the problem. I have
either added or removed being docked, having a battery in the system,
turning off ACPI, and turning off xscreensaver in _ALL_ possible
combinations but it still powers off.

Just last night I upgraded the fglrx driver from the Kubuntu provided
8.28.8 (on Xorg 7.1.1 w/ 2.6.17-10 kernel) to the latest ATI.com
provided 8.32.5 [ http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html ]. An lspci
shows:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71c4

which is a Mobility FireGL V5200 and is confirmed by ThinkWiki [
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_FireGL_V5200 ].  I note
that Lenovo provides a 8.26.22 driver for SLED 10 for a T60p. But, for
the Z61p, they only have a CD drive firmware update [
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=/product.do?template=%2Fproductpage%2Flandingpages%2FproductPageLandingPage.vm&sitestyle=lenovo&brandind=10&familyind=317531&machineind=317560&modelind=339067&partnumberind=0&subcategoryind=0&doctypeind=9&doccategoryind=0&operatingsystemind=52305&validate=true
]

For what it's worth, my organization is having an IBM/Lenovo tech out
next week to look at the machine. We'll see what that produces. I
would be very curious to hear others' experiences on a Z61p.

Thanks all,

On 1/14/07, George Ruinelli <george@ruinelli.ch> wrote:
> Hello all
>
> I want to buy a new thinkpad and doesn't know which one is the best.
> In the selection are the Z61p (UA1J6SG) and the Z61m (UA19JS{G,F,E})
>
> The Z61m's seem to be well supported on linux, while I can't find many
> informations about the Z61p in the www.
>
> Because the battery longevity  and the RAM, I would prefer the Z61p.
>
> I need dualhead support and would like to use Xgl, if possible.
> Whats with the Cam, fingerprintreader, Suspend2{Disk,RAM}, WLAN, Bluetooth
> and
> else?
> Is there someone, who has experiences  with one of this thinkpads?
> Any reports would be cool.
>
> PTW: Does someone known the differences between a "Core Duo T2500" and a
> "Core
> 2 Duo T2700" processor? Wikipedia didn't help me.
>
> thank you very much!
> George
> --
> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>


-- 
Brian D. Ropers-Huilman, Director
Systems Administration and Technical Operations    <bropers@msi.umn.edu>
Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation
599 Walter Library                                   +1 612-626-5948 (V)
117 Pleasant Street S.E.                             +1 612-624-8861 (F)
University of Minnesota                               Twin Cities Campus
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0255                       http://www.msi.umn.edu/